Game Lecture Series - Andrei Xuereb MHFA

Fantasy vs Reality - Sword fighting in Video Games is a comparative lecture and demonstration about combat with swords and other edged weapons as used in video games and history.

The objective of this lecture is to educate the audience about the available historical resources, both for their general knowledge and to inspire writers and artists to enrich their works.

About Andrei Xuereb

Andrei Xuereb is the person responsible for the introduction of Historical Fencing as a European Martial art in the Maltese islands.

Born in 1975, started his journey in fencing in 1997 where he joined a sport fencing club, and specialized in French foil and epee under sport fencing coach Juan Formosa. Andrei later studied Italian epee under sport fencing master Daniel Sammut and was being prepared to give exams to become a sport fencing master.

The lecture covers the symbolic meaning of the sword, the use of longswords, sideswords, rapiers, pole weapons and unarmed combat, as well as the practical problems with certain fantasy weapon designs and some of the more unusual real-world weapons and techniques which might not seem out of place in a work of fiction.



In 2005 together with two other fencers, Andrei founded the Mithras Sword Fight Club which started as a classical fencing school teaching mainly Italian Epee and then later transformed itself into the first historical fencing club in Malta, practicing rapier, smallsword and longsword. Andrei stopped his journey towards becoming a sport fencing master in order to totally devote himself to the research and practice of Historical Fencing and European Martial Arts.

Since 2006 he is a student of the methods taught by his teacher Andrea Lupo Sinclair who is the founder and technical director of the Federazione Italiana Scherma Antica e Storica (FISAS). In 2009 Andrei felt the need that a national body had to be formed in order to represent those who took Historical Fencing as a serious discipline and to establish Historical Fencing on a national level. Together with three senior members of Mithras Sword Fight club, the first committee of the Malta Historical Fencing Association was established and in November 2011 the association was officially launched to the public.

In order to give the best instruction possible to students within the Malta Historical Fencing Association, Andrei has attended and regularly still attends academies and international meetings on Historical Fencing organized by FISAS and other groups in Europe. He earned the title of Maestro D’Armi in the FISAS system (Longsword, Rapier, Sidesword and Dueling Sabre) after passing public examinations in each weapon. He is the first non-Italian student to be qualified in the FISAS system and also the only instructor in Malta to be fully qualified to teach Historical Fencing.